Reflect or Die
To create something to dream about, I need exceptional women, locations and architectures. - thierry mugler
I saw a post today that resonated so deeply with me. The post said, “You can't hurt my feelings. I was built in film rooms where my mistakes were paused, rewound, and analyzed in slow motion”. Being on set with creatives, you get to see a fragility and artist ego that I am otherwise unfamiliar with. I was formed and raised in a sports community, surrounded by athletic dreams that actualized for so many people I grew up with. Whether football, basketball, baseball, or track, the pursuit of greatness was ingrained in us all, and film review as a form of critique was a cornerstone for betterment. Your feelings didn’t matter, and how your day was going mattered even less; the point was to reflect on your performance in order to continue your pursuit. Because of that, I tend to take a similar approach with my work.
The subjectivity of art means that if one person notices a flaw they are able to articulate, there is a good chance that someone else will notice it as well. This doesn’t mean taking every opinion to heart, but it does suggest that the artist’s intention could be overshadowed if not handled with care. The pursuit of perfection requires taste, of course, but editing and revisiting is an important part of the creative process.
In coming back to blogging, I took a moment to reflect on some of my old work, and though it took a bit to find my point of view, I had some real glimpses of greatness in my earlier work. Working in fashion, I’ll revisit this journey later. It gave me an opportunity to refine my eye and, in turn, define myself more clearly moving forward. But that doesn’t mean past work is unimportant; it actually signals the opposite.
A lot of what I was doing before was almost an imitation of work that inspired me rather than a fresh take, something I look at now as a cardinal sin. I so badly wanted to be seen as a fashion photographer that I was hungry to present myself in ways that I believed would feel familiar to decision-makers in the industry. At that time, I was also grappling with the stigma associated with "boudoir" photography because I believed my work encompassed more depth than that genre suggests. While I have a deep appreciation for the art of the human body, and the celebration of the female form is central to boudoir photography, it is also a key aspect of fashion photography. Celebrating women in beautifully crafted clothing (or even without it), in exotic locations, and surrounded by inspiring architecture is a common thread among all my favorite fashion photographers. So I never identified as a boudoir photographer, even though many people had a limited perspective on my work.
Realizing that I was on the right path all along was a refreshing boost of confidence. Some of my older work was as timeless as it was raw, as fresh as it was familiar, but it was all about finding my point of view, my voice in my art. It actually reminded me to push my work and challenge the idea in an attempt to expand it even more. And with everything I’ve learned from shooting so much E-Comm, I can sell fashion in my sleep. It’s a goal of mine to continue to discover unconventional angles and compositions to tell stories as opposed to relying on what I know will work to satisfy the status quo, to blow minds as we tell familiar stories.
